Captain America: Civil War

A couple of days ago, I watched the midnight release of Captain America:Civil War. Because this is my fashion blog, I guess it’s not obvious how big of a comic book fan I am.

But let me make it clear; I am a massive comic book fan.

I am so happy I got to be one of the first groups to watch this in the UK. The Civil War storyline is one of my favourite all time comic book stories, and I have been excited to see this movie on screen since they first announced the Avengers movie all those years ago.

At this point, I have nothing but praise. There are so many characters in this movie, I was worried it would get bogged down by trying to shoehorn them all in, or use certain characters for the sake of them, but they didn’t! They managed to juggle all of the characters, no one has a useless part, everyone was brought in for a reason and you could see why. They figured out how to use previous characters AND introduce new characters without it being like a cameo appearance. It was a very natural and organic use of the heroes, so I loved that.

Also, Black Panther is so So SO SOOOOO COOOOL. Literally, omg. I have no idea why I wasn’t interested in him before, but daaayyym, he has some pretty cool skills, a super cool fighting style and was generally fun to watch.

I was also worried it would be Avengers 2.5, Instead of Captain America 3, as in Age of Ultron, you could see the tension, and the conflict building up, predominantly many of Tony and Steve’s disagreement. This story is almost a continuation of those, so it could have been an Avengers movie, or it’s own Marvel’s Civil War movie. This, along with the inclusion of so many characters, risked losing focus of the movie to be on Captain America, but somehow, the managed to keep it a Captain America movie. It was still focused on him, I suppose you could argue it was more like a Captain America and Iron Man movie, as they seemed to have almost equal screen time. But it had throwbacks to previous Captain America movies, so for me, it was still his movie.

Spider-Man is my ultimate favourite superhero ever. I have always been attracted to his snarky childish humour, and that he was the typical annoying teenager for his villains. He was relatable to me because he was a kid. Andrew Garfield is, and may always be my favourite Spider-Man, as he captured all the qualities I love about Spider-Man perfectly for me. And my favourite Spider-Man was Ultimate Spider-Man, which is what TheAmazing Spider-Man drew most of its inspiration from, I suppose to be different from the first Spider-Man movies, which attempted to be reflective of the classic Amazing Spider-Man comic books.

BUT, regardless of my love for Garfield’s performance, Tom Holland, did a pretty good job of playing the role. The writers also did well with him. I am so happy that he is finally that truly funny geeky little kid that he was in the comic books. He acts exactly how you’d expect an awe-stricken teenager who gets to hang out with the big leagues for a day would act. Imagine being 15 and then roped into hanging out with the Avengers. YOU’D TOTALLY GEEK OUT.

After hearing the title of the new Spider-Man film (Homecoming) I wasn’t sure how excited I was not it. He is my favourite character but I haven’t felt hyped up for the third reboot. But after seeing Tom Holland, I am certainly excited to see him reprise the role in his solo movie. He definitely brought a lot of humour to the movie, and I want to say he stole the show, because when he was in it, he really did, but really, I think everyone had their moment to shine; like I said, no one was uselessly used. The only complaint I have is about his costume, it just looks really weird to me, but I’m sure he will get an upgrade. He still has sick skills, and improvised well, using with his surrounding to his advantage, which is what Spidey does best.

The action scenes were visually cool to watch, they were fast paced which made it exciting. In fact the whole movie was fast paced, and a lot was going on so you couldn’t really get bored. It’s one of the reasons I want to watch it again ASAP, in case I missed something.

The story is not exactly the same comic book story, but it has got the concepts down; freedom vs accountability. It’s such a tricky conflict and you totally understand both sides. All of the motivations are clear, and the disagreement is clear.

There’s also so many superhero fights in this, it’s such a geek-out moment for me to see them. To see the pages of a comic book on screen is just surreal. It’s so conflicting as a viewer and a comic book fan to see heroes that you like on the “wrong team” or two heroes you love fighting each other. Neither of them are the villain, they're just fighting for what they believe is right. It's just so sad to see them not on the same side.

I don't know if it's the best superhero movie or even my favourite superhero movie (I'm pretty bad at picking favourites) but it is definitely up there. I highly recommend giving it a watch